Rihanna You Da One Manicure

I have loved this song since I first listened to Rihanna's Talk That Talk album - it's definitely one of the few songs on the radio that I blast whenever it comes on while I'm driving. Take a listen! (Warning: be prepared to witness a both unnecessary and excessive amount crotch-grabbing)

Other than the aforementioned aspect, the video is pretty fun to watch. I also had a feeling that her video would have some sort of awesome manicure and, sure enough, it does! Here are some screen shots if you didn't catch it:

Cool, right? I'm really loving simple, geometric manicures with sharp lines like this one. It creates a cool look without being too busy. To start off, I did a basecoat (as always) and two coats of white and then top coat (Seche Vite). Then, I ended up letting it sit overnight but half an hour to an hour would be sufficient. This way, you can be sure that the tape in the next step won't pull up the white polish (Seche Vite is key here). Otherwise, the whole manicure could be ruined by a little white section being pulled off.
Then, with regular Scotch tape, I taped off a little triangle section starting at the cuticle and ending about 3/4 of the way toward the nail tip.
This is what it looked like (kind of hard to see on the white):

Then, I painted Essie's Licorice on the section left uncovered by the tape, making sure to cover all the white polish at the cuticle.

These big tape pieces make hand movement pretty awkward so I could really only do one hand at a time. However, you could trim the pieces and it would be much easier.
I let the black polish dry for about 15 minutes, carefully peeled off the tape, added another coat of Seche Vite to lock it all in and here's how it turned out:

Other than the fact that I don't have the long claws Rihanna does, I really like the way this manicure turned out. It's very dramatic and eye catching and also has a similar elongating effect as the geometric holiday manicure I did here. What do you think? Would you rock this mani?

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Geometric Christmas Tree Holiday Manicure

Usually, when I'm thinking up ideas for cute themed manicures, I try to avoid just painting a tiny picture of something onto the nail. Instead, I like to come up with creative ways to work something into the shape of the nail so that it comes together as a whole instead of being made up of separate parts (like this and this and this). However, I do paint images onto the nails sometimes, like here and here, because it can also look really adorable.
So, when I wanted to do a manicure with something resembling a Christmas Tree, I decided to give it a geometric feel. I used Nailene's  Perfect Tips and Toes French Polish Guides to create the Christmas Tree Shape on the nail.

After a base coat, I painted one coat of Yves Saint Laurent's Gold polish. Only one coat was needed - this is a very beautiful and buttery polish. At this point, I used one coat of Seche Vite and let the nails dry for 30 minutes so that the stickers wouldn't peel the polish off.

Then, I used the Nailene stickers that were meant for toes (they are straight unlike the guides designed for fingernails) to section off a triangle on the nail.

Then, I painted OPI's Jade is the New Black as the trees.

To finish it off, I carefully peeled of the stickers and added another coat of Seche Vite. I really like the way this one turned out - it's both geometric and modern and the shape of the "trees" also elongates the nails. Plus, the gold and green are great holiday colours and look super luxurious together.

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